Tag Archives: Pennsylvania

Below story published by Find A Death by an online user. I do not know the actual source of the article/story however, the link to the thread is below. (Photos were gathered threw out the internet including the Crime Library and Murderpedia.)

First a little about Laurie Show. She was a 16-year-old girl who, in the early 90’s, attended Conestoga Valley High School in Lampeter Township, Pennsylvania. She was a typical teen. She didn’t ‘rebel’ and was considered a very good student who got good grades, attended church and enjoyed reading the Bible. She was very friendly, liked to hang out with her friends, was very close to her mother, Hazel Show, and her father who was divorced from Hazel. Some activities she enjoyed was bowling, going to the movies, swimming, etc. Unfortunately Laurie, who was very friendly and kindhearted, met another young woman named Lisa Michelle Lambert who went by her middle name, Michelle. It was a quick ‘friendship’ that quickly turned fatal.

It was the summer of 1991 in East Lampeter Township, Penn. Before the year was over, four teenagers from different circles would find themselves drawn into a deadly triangle that would end in the tragic death of 16 year old Laurie Show.

Lisa Michelle Lambert began dating Lawrence “Butch” Yunkin, despite that fact that Yunkin had physically assaulted Lambert and raped her when the two started ‘dating’.

Soon the couples fixation with each other would spin horribly out of control and they began having violent arguments. The destructive relationship only got worse when the couple began using other people to make each other jealous. This particular summer, Lawrence sought out 15 year old Laurie Show. A move that would prove fatal.

Photo of Lawrence and Michelle shortly before their imprisonment. Michelle had naturally brown hair but dyed it blonde. She also had brown eyes but regularly wore blue contacts.

Laurie was a fun-loving and popular 10th grader who everybody loved to be around. The couple dated twice during a one week relationship. On their second date, Lawrence raped the innocent 15 year old in the back of his van, a charge which Yunkin denies.. After the alleged date rape, Laurie confided her terrible secret in both her parents. It was during this time frame, Lisa and Lawrence got back together.

When Lisa learned that Lawrence had dated Laurie she nearly went insane with jealousy. However, it wasn’t the dating that had Lisa in an uproar, it was the idea that Lawrence had slept with another girl, completely ignoring the fact that it was not consensual.

Photo of Lisa Michelle Lambert

Three small photos, one is a high school photo of Tabitha Buck taken within a year or two prior to her imprisonment, and the other two photos are Lawrence Yunkin.

These violent, jealous feelings grew into uncontrollable urges when Lisa learned she was pregnant. Lisa would then take her pent-up anger and fixate it on 16 year old Laurie Show by stalking her in public, threatening her, calling her home dozens of times and leaving lewd messages. One day, Lambert followed Show and her mother, Hazel Show, to the grocery market. She then walked up to them and starting screaming and calling Show names before turning her attention to Show’s mother and telling her that her daughter was a “slut who has ruined her life”.

Lambert, who was a few months pregnant at this time, followed Show to a store parking lot one afternoon and beat her up.

Show was so terrified of Lambert that she never went anywhere alone. She wouldn’t even stay at her home alone. Her parents took turns staying at the apartment with her, or taking her with them on errands.

On the night of December 19, 1991 – Hazel Show receives a call from a woman claiming to be Laurie’s guidance counselor requesting a meeting early the next morning. Lisa Michelle Lambert stops at the local K-Mart and purchases two ski masks and a rope then appears at the apartment of Tabitha Buck upset and wanting to talk. Tabitha would later tell that Lisa was upset over a possible legal problem regarding her pervious assaults on Laurie Show. It was a lack in judgment that Tabitha Buck will never forgive herself for. Lambert went on to inform Buck to wear her hair up, not to wear any make up or fingernail polish the next morning.

Tabitha made her way to the door, with every step her feet felt ten times heavier. She raised her hand and knocked at the door. Laurie answered the door and “I asked if Hazel was home and she said ‘No.’ I asked again for some reason.” Lambert comes up behind Buck and charges in front of her into the Show home where a brief struggle ensues. The two began struggling, arms flailing. For one brief instance Laurie felt freedom as Lisa released her with a shove. Laurie ran towards Buck as Lambert screamed, “Don’t let her out! Stop her!” just as Laurie ran into Buck and the door. Laurie grabbed the sunglasses off of Bucks face and tossed them across the room, scratching her in the process.

“She didn’t get out,” Buck tells the story quietly from prison during an interview with a local paper. Tabitha catches a gleam of something shiny and realizes that Lambert has a knife. Laurie must have seen the blade at approximately the same time, though she made an attempt to grab it from Lambert. Considering her fearful state, I don’t think she realized that she was grabbing the blade itself or perhaps she didn’t care. In either event, Lambert yanked the knife back causing wounds on Laurie’s hand.

“There was blood,” Tabitha recounts somberly, “Laurie went running back to a room. Michelle went after her. Then me.”

Tabitha watched in horror as Michelle grabbed Laurie by the hair and drew the knife through it, chopping off handfuls of her hair then began savagely beating her. Tabitha recalls seeing Laurie with the phone but is unsure of what happened to it. Laurie tried to fight off her attacker as best she could by kicking her, but Lambert was enraged and Laurie had no chance.

Laurie, still surprised and unsure of what was expected of her is tearfully questing Lambert, “What do you want? Leave me alone!” Her plea’s went unnoticed by Lambert who was at this point was uncontrollable to any extent. The jealousy and anger she had for Laurie built up into rage by this point. Laurie was bent over on her stomach as Lambert began beating her again, this time hitting her in the head with the knife. Michelle handed Tabitha the knife at that point and reached for the rope attempting to put it over Laurie’s head. Tabitha recalls Lisa telling Laurie “Stop struggling Laurie.” Michelle demanded, “It’ll be a lot easier this way.” as she attempts to place the rope around Laurie’s neck. Lambert finally gets the rope around her neck, but Laurie begins struggling again. As Laurie leaned a little bit further over, Tabitha saw her reach for a pair of scissors and knocked them out her reach. Buck winces as she recalls the event. Lisa Michelle Lambert, driven into a jealous rage tells Tabitha to “Cut her throat” Buck refuses. Lisa takes the knife back from Buck and tired of Laurie’s struggling, she cut’s her in the leg and tells her to stop struggling.

Laurie had by now rolled over on her and began kicking at Lambert again. Laurie, desperately fighting for her life, is screaming, hitting, kicking, attempting any means of escape as Lambert again screams “You’re going to kill my baby! Don’t let her kill my baby!” Lambert screamed. “Grab her feet! Make her stop kicking!” Buck in response to Lambert’s cries placed herself on Laurie’s legs facing the door and away from the horror unfolding behind her. In the next instant Laurie stopped moving. The moment Laurie stopped moving, Tabitha slowly raises herself off of Laurie’s legs and turns in shock to a scene that should have been in a horror movie. She watched as Lisa Michelle Lambert drew the knife across Laurie’s throat as though she were cutting a loaf of bread.

“Is she dead?” Tabitha asked in horror.

“I don’t know.” Lisa responded then proceeded to cut Laurie’s throat further in an attempt to make certain she was indeed dead. Tabitha watched as Lisa Michelle Lambert held Laurie’s chin back with her left hand and cut her throat numerous more times.

Within minutes, a 16 year old innocent child was dead at the hands of two killers. One committed the act, the other did nothing to prevent it.

When Lambert was finished carving 16 year old Laurie Show up, she handed the tip of the knife to Tabitha. Tabitha placed the tip in her coat pocket, picked up her sunglasses that had been knocked off during the initial confrontation and together, the two killers left the condo and Laurie Show bleeding to death on the floor on her bedroom.

At approximately 7:20 a.m. Hazel Show returned home only to be stopped by a concerned neighbor questioning her as to what was going on upstairs to cause so much commotion. Hazel dropped everything and ran, a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. No person, certainly not a mother, should ever have to witness the scene the Hazel Show was greeted with when entering her 16 year old daughters bedroom. When entering Laurie’s bedroom, Hazel saw Laurie in the middle of her bedroom floor lying in a puddle of her own blood. A rope was knotted around her neck and her throat was savagely cut.

Hazel shrieked in horror, screamed for her neighbor to call 911 and cradled her daughter, telling her that she was sorry, and that she (Laurie) didn’t do anything wrong. Laurie managed to whisper three words before she died. “Michelle did it”.

Lisa Lambert was arrested the same day.

VERDICT:

After waiving her right to a trial by jury, Ms. Lambert proceeded to trial and was found guilty of first degree murder and criminal conspiracy to commit murder on July 20, 1992. The Commonwealth elected to seek the death penalty in the Lambert case. Following a hearing on the penalty phase, the court declined to impose the death penalty and sentenced Ms. Lambert to a term of life in prison without the possibility of parole. She is currently incarcerated at Massachusetts Correctional Institute of Framingham in Framingham, MA.

A 19-year-old Pennsylvania man intentionally slammed his car at 100 mph into a guardrail, and then smothered his 17-year-old girlfriend by sitting on her head after learning that she might be pregnant, according to police.

Police filed homicide and other charges last week against Benjamin Daniel Klinger, 19, of Elizabethtown, for the December 4 death of Sammi Heller on an interstate near Manheim.

‘At first glance, this appeared to be simply another tragic vehicle accident,’ Lancaster County District Attorney Craig Stedman told the Intelligencer Journal/Lancaster New Era. ‘However, the police worked hand-in-hand with our forensic experts and saw this was far more complicated, sinister and certainly criminal.’

Volatile relationship: Benjamin Klinger, above, is accused of killing his on-again, off-again girlfriend, Samantha Heller, below, by intentionally crashing the car they were in and then sitting on her head until she died of asphyxiation

The bizarre and tragic incident unfolded at around 2am on Route 283 in Ralpho Township when police say Klinger rammed his Toyota sedan into a guardrail, and then proceeded to smother his girlfriend.

Heller, a senior at J.P. McCaskey High School, was described in her obituary as athletic and a lover of motorcycles and horses. According to court documents, the 17-year-old and Klinger had a rocky on-again, off-again relationship.

She allegedly told a friend that Klinger previously tried to scare her while driving and that he had threatened to kill them both in a crash.Click here for full article written and published by Dailymail.co.uk

→ Ashley Marie Barber, 18, and Nicole “Jade” Olmstead, 20, were arraigned in Crawford County on August 24, 2012, for the murder of Brandy Stevens-Rosine, a student at Youngstown State University, and Olmstead’s former flame. The couple confessed to the murder at a preliminary hearing in July, revealed the gruesome details of the brutal murder to the court.

On May 17, 2012, Stevens-Rosine went to visit her ex, Olmstead, at the home she shared with her new partner, Ashley Marie Barber, 20, in Wayne Township. The couple lured her into the woods, kicked and beat her, strangled her — but not to death. Barber then head butted her, Olmstead beat her on the head with a shovel until her brains spilled out, and they repeatedly smashed her head against a stump. When they realized that Stevens-Rosine was still breathing the women bashed her face in with a large rock and poured water into her mouth and nose to drown her. Ultimately they buried her alive in the shallow grave prepared beforehand. The coroner’s report concludes that Stevens-Rosine died from asphyxia caused by dirt in her airway consistent with having been buried alive. Reports thus far have not mentioned how long the attack lasted, or how long Stevens-Rosine’s suffering would have lasted. The motive for the murder is also not clear. Both women are charged with one count of criminal homicide, conspiracy to commit criminal homicide and tampering with physical evidence. If convicted they will face life in prison without the possibility of parole — but not the death penalty.

District Attorney Francis Schultz decided, “after careful consideration of the law and the facts that have been uncovered in the investigation of this case,” not to ask for the death penalty in this case, he added that though the murder was “brutal,” the allegations did not meet Pennsylvania’s criteria for the requesting the death penalty: Murder in the first degree with at least one of 18 possible aggravating factors. Schultz stated that a first-degree murder case might qualify for the death penalty if the “offense was committed by means of torture.”

SOURCE:Click the photo provided which will link you to the original article.